serinde

I *HEART* pasties and have wanted to perfect the craft for awhile, and was at sufficiently loose ends this weekend (goddam tropical fronts) to work on it.

Used the Nigella pasty recipe--3.3c flour, 8oz lard; it's effectively pie crust dough--and blitzed them, as she puts it, in Mister Choppy. This works startlingly better than doing by hand, as I think I've mentioned before. Mom was right, lard does make the best crust, even if my lard was a little bit past its best and had that slightly musty smell/taste.

For the filling, I started with a recipe out of Fannie Farmer for "pork turnovers". This has you saute a bunch of onions in a LOT of butter (I used olive oil for the sake of

naudia's lactose intolerance; no big deal) which you then make a white sauce out of, in situ. Substituted unsweetened soy milk for the requested cream, which also worked just fine. Added chopped apple and craisins and pork; the latter of which, lazy creature that I am, instead of dicing, I blitzed in Mister Choppy. So, um, sort of ground cooked pork. This did not turn out as squidgy as I feared, I'm happy to say.

Roll out 3.5" circles of dough, glop in some filling, fold over, crimp, bake at 425 for ~20 minutes.

The first batch had an unfavorable crust:filling ratio (rectified in the second batch by rolling the dough thinner and stuffing in more filling), and also we found the filling a bit bland (rectified by adding more salt and herbs de Provence). Could have used a bit more apple, too. I'd like to try with gravy instead of white sauce, just to see what happens. And of course I want to play with other fillings, though that falls under "minor edits", I should think.